Traditional
disciplines have tended to reflect predominantly male perspectives and women
have been largely invisible. Although women have been studied for a long
time, only recently have women significantly influenced methodology and how
that knowledge has been put to use. The new minor in Gender and Women’s
Studies program will provide students the opportunity to study the full
range of human experience and arrangements of social organization from the
perspectives of those whose participation has been traditionally distorted,
omitted, neglected, or denied – women in their racial, class, sexual,
national, and cultural diversity. Students will develop a deep appreciation
for complexities of power and asymmetries in gender relations across time,
class, and cultures.

Understanding the intersections,
practice, and effects of class, ethnicity, gender, nationality, race, religion,
and sex is imperative for learning to live in a modern, multicultural,
diversified society. The program will prepare students – both men and women –
to manage, nurture, and shape such a society, through critical understanding,
leadership and responsible action. This program will prepare students for the
way the world is and the way the world is becoming by helping them to examine
alternative institutional arrangements that will help them cope with an
increasingly diverse workplace and the combination of work and family
responsibilities. Graduates will have the tools – knowledge, self-awareness,
critical thinking skills, research training, writing skills and breadth of
perspective – that public service organizations, the media, private industry,
government, and graduate schools want and need.

Program Structure & Courses:

Students wishing to minor in Gender & Women’s
Studies must take a minimum of eighteen (18) credits in either the four-year BA
program or the four-year BACS program.

The following courses will satisfy the
requirements for a minor in Gender and Women’s studies:

AN/S 220
Humankind: Nature & Development (6 credits)

Developmental and comparative perspectives on
human nature, showing how natural and social sciences interface in explaining
the interplay of biological and socio-cultural factors in our behaviour

AN/S 221
Families: A Cross-Cultural Tour (3 credits)

A course in the forms and workings of family,
household, and larger kinship structures in a variety of cultural settings, to
deepen our insight into our own ways

AN/S 334 [Cross-listed
as MIKM 336] Images of Self
and Other in Cross-Cultural Perspective (6 credits)

Colonialism produced an enduring cultural legacy
with a range of severe consequences for indigenous cultural reproduction and
social organization. Europe was also not spared the drastic consequences of its
own expansionism. How indigenous self definitions and how traditions have been
transformed, revitalized or created anew are the focus of this course, which
considers indigenous peoples in a global perspective covering the past 500 years

AN/S 360
Social & Cultural Constructions of Gender (6 credits)

Critical study of the socio-cultural roots,
dynamics, and consequences of what “male” and “female” mean to people in various
times and places, with respect to a wide variety of life experiences

AN/S 392
Work and Women in Society (6 credits)

Examination of women’s position in society,
focusing on those life-sustaining activities known as “work” (“paid” or
“unpaid”), and investigating bio-physical, socio-psychological, and
sociocultural underpinnings of the relevant practices

COMM 333
Family Communication (3 credits)

Examines communication patterns and networks
within families that support or inhibit cohesion or change. Topics include:
family systems, communication patterns, self-disclosure, family themes, rules,
relational stages, conflict styles, power, and decision-making. Focus is on
developing functional family networks and effective communication skills

COMM 345
Gender & Communication (3 credits)

The communication similarities and differences
between women and men in various communication contexts

COMM 347
Women & Communication (3 credits)

Communication as it pertains to various aspects
of women’s lives and how contexts and cultural ideologies specifically affect
women and their communication

ENGL 320
Women: The British Tradition (6 credits)

A contextual and historical study of literature
in a variety of genres from the fourteenth to the twentieth centuries

ENGL 420
Feminist Literary Theory (6 credits)

The course examines feminist literary criticism
and critical theories produced by women and men primarily since 1965, though
some attention is paid to earlier works

FOLK 311
Gender in Traditional and Informal Culture (3 credits)

A study of how patterns of assigning gender
roles – the division of labour, ideas of masculinity and femininity, sexual
identity, the body as form – can be both informed and perpetuated by
‘traditional’ culture. Simultaneously, a study of the remarkable adaptability of
folkloric forms to act as a critique against these same patterns of role
assignments. Fieldwork and/or archival work required

HUMA 111
Women in Western Civilization (3 credits)

An introduction to some of the social, economic,
and cultural issues which confronted women, from the Middle Ages through to the
Industrial Revolution

HIST 430
Witch Hunting and Popular Culture in Late Medieval and Early Modern Scotland (6
credits)

This course will examine the development and
evolution of witchhunting in Scotland from the sixteenth to the eighteenth
centuries. Particular attention will be paid to the use of the phenomenon as a
resource for the study of popular cultures, conceptions and constructions of
gender, and the political and religious turmoil of the period

HIST 462
Women’s History: The British North American Experience (6 credits)

Studies the evolution of women’s role in Britain
and Canada during the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth
century. Takes a chronological approach to the study of social, political, and
economic obstacles which women had to overcome to attain equality in British and
Canadian society, including CapeBreton society

PHIL 205
Philosophies of Love, Sex, and Friendship (3 credits)

What is love? How is it different than
friendship? What, if any, relationships obtain between these concepts and sex?
What differentiates morally acceptable from unacceptable sexual behaviour?
These, and other related questions, will be explored through historical and
contemporary readings

PHIL 207
Feminist Philosophy (3 credits)

This course examines core issues in feminist
philosophy concerning the oppression of particular groups of persons, focusing
on problems and debates in pornography, prostitution, language, physical
appearance, and relationships. Students are expected to demonstrate
understanding of the philosophical problems raised by such social and historical
practices and to reason through those issues in a clear and persuasive manner in
the aims of formulating a convincing intellectual stance on a given topic.

POLS 275: The Politics of
Social Division: Race, Gender, and Class (3 credits)

This course examines race, gender and class as they affect domestic and
international politics. Particular attention will be paid to how these
categories of social division have shifted over time and how the new politics of
globalization may provide both challenges and opportunities for deepening
equality and justice

PSYC 365
Human Sexuality and Sex Education (3 credits)

Human sexuality: for students in understanding
their own sexuality, for parents in guiding the development of their children,
and for teachers required to provide formal instruction on sexuality

RELS 291
Women in the Western Religious Tradition (3 credits)

Feminist theology has developed recently as a
critique and reinterpretation of traditional theology of women. The course
examines this new theology and the new insights it generates in the Western
religious tradition.

RELS 293
Women in the Eastern Religious Tradition (3 credits)

Feminist theology has developed recently as a
critique and reinterpretation of traditional theology of women. The course
examines this new theology and the new insights it generates in the Eastern
religious tradition.

SOCO 210
Sociology of the Family (6 credits)

The study of family roles, forms, processes, and
functions, from the perspectives of household, community, and the larger social
system, with special attention to our own contemporary society and its key
problems